Meanwhile, Mormon archeologists are desperately yearning, seeking, trying to find any trace of the mythical lost city of Zarahemla...and they always will be.

https://gizmodo.com/ruins-of-5-000-year-old-megalopolis-uncovered-in-israel-1838874998

Archaeologists working in northern Israel have discovered the remnants of an Early Bronze Age city that boasted some 6,000 inhabitants, in a find that’s dramatically altering conceptions of the region’s ancient past.

The lost city, found during the construction of a new highway interchange, is located near the Israeli city of Harish in the Haifa area. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) led the excavations, which required 2.5 years of work and the assistance of nearly 5,000 Jewish and Arab teenagers and volunteers taking part in IAA’s Sharing Heritage Project, according to a press release from the IAA.

With a population somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 people, the 5,000-year-old Early Bronze Age city, called En Esur, is rebooting archaeologists’ ideas of urbanization in Israel at the end of the 4th millennium BCE. The city featured surprisingly modern amenities, such as planned roads (including streets and alleyways), residential and public areas (including an intriguing temple), and defensive fortifications.

I think this new discovery is wonderful!

The city, as it exists now, is in such "good repair" (comparatively speaking, it is five thousand years old!), and the discoveries they are making are so clear, understandable--and unambiguous.

There is a photo of the archaeologists walking down a well-constructed alleyway which I really like--and was also surprised by. Like most everyone, I think, I had an "image" in my mind of a generic "alleyway in ancient times"-- but what was nowhere in my own mental image is how SMALL the width of that alley was!

I think of what we commonly bring home from Costco or wherever, and realize that, probably, I could not get the "regular" cartons we use now, for a new paper shredder or whatever, down that same alley (assuming that the walls were of the height they were 5,000 years ago; not the height--maybe a couple of feet high--they are now).

At least for me, these photos reorient my prior assumptions and mental images about how we generally imagine life back then to have been, and transform our understanding of life in that era to make it amazingly, and much more realistically, comprehensible.